Games

Very well, yes. Otherwise, I get burnt out. I can't maintain 'studying' Spanish every day on top of being an adult and looking after myself. But I can always dedicate half an hour (or more) to escapism. It's not so much the time, but the energy required for in-depth 'studying'. So games and TV can really help with that.

If I come across an unknown word on TV, I ignore it. In a game, it depends. In a cut-scene? I ignore it. During gameplay, I usually try to work out its meaning. Sometimes, if I know enough to keep playing, I don't even worry about meaning, I just keep playing. If I come across the word three or more times and cannot figure it out, I look it up. If the word is frustrating me, I look it up. Occasionally, I write down these words, with a translation, aiming to keep a list – but it never lasts long and I usually forget about my lists quite quickly.

In a game like Skyrim or Fallout 4, you know exactly what e.g. the nouns are because you can see them. So if you look at a carrot and the label on-screen says zanahoria, it's obvious it's a carrot. Words like 'habilidades' (abilities) and 'otorga' (grants/gives) are transparent. I know what they mean; but it's strange – I wouldn't necessarily be able to say what the equivalent English word is. I don't worry about it.

To build vocabulary, I do 'listening-reading' (see my post in [email protected]), I read on Kindle with the Spanish dictionary set up and click unknown words for an instant translation (I don't do this with every unknown word), and I read parallel texts. I also use google translate to look up unknown words if I hear or read them 'in the wild'. To speed up this process, start with texts that you have read before or texts on topics with which you are familiar. You will be able to guess the meaning of words more easily, which means you won't need to look up so many words.

Note that I rarely do this, but a fast way to build vocabulary is through word lists:

1. Three columns. Write seven-to-ten random words in the target language column 1. Translate them to a known language in column 2. Then translate back to the target language in column 3. Then write the words in the target language in column 1 of a new table.
2. The next day, look at each word and see if you can remember it. If so, write it in column 2 in a colour (e.g. blue). If you have to look it up, write it in column 2 in a different colour (e.g. green). Translate column 2 in column 3. Start a new column 1 in a new table, adding the 'green' words. Add new words up to seven-to-ten, in total. If you had to look up e.g. three words, you can add four-to-seven new words.
3. The next day, go again. Repeat.
4. Each week, do one long list of all the words that you remembered (written in blue). You can review the trickier words in this list once a month.

Paul Nation wrote a good guide on learning languages: https://www.wgtn.ac.nz/lals/resources/paul-nations-resources/paul-nations-publications/publications/documents/foreign-language_1125.pdf . The same thing in Spanish: https://www.wgtn.ac.nz/lals/resources/paul-nations-resources/paul-nations-publications/publications/documents/spanish-version-what-you-need-to-know-to-learn-a-foreign-language.pdf . You can use this as a parallel text if you open the English and Spanish PDFs side-by-side. He has some other work, here, including the same guide in different languages: https://www.wgtn.ac.nz/lals/resources/paul-nations-resources/paul-nations-publications/publications .